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The Power Of Employee Reviews For Your Employer Brand

Moritz Kothe is the CEO of Kununu, a company that offers employer branding and review solutions for professionals.

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Most organizations spend tons of time thinking about their consumer brand -- how prospective customers perceive their products or services, how effectively their brand communicates the information it needs to attract those paying customers and the ROI on all of the marketing activities they’re doing to grow that public brand.

However, as second nature as it is for your organization to care about consumer branding, you may not be able to say the same when it comes to employer branding. Some companies are making a real, enviable effort with their employer branding strategies to help them attract candidates; however, a vast majority of established companies today have yet to do the same.

My team has had thousands of conversations in the past year with HR executives and has heard stories of established companies with great, active consumer brands that haven’t taken the same care to manage their employer brand, let alone optimize it. This wouldn’t matter if we all were filling our open positions quickly and with stellar candidates -- but we are not. From a global perspective, we are all experiencing thehighest talent shortage in over 10 years.

Now more than ever, employer branding matters. And in this age of free online information, job seekers -- just like consumers -- crave honest, inside information about what they’re buying into, which is where your company’s online information and employee reviews play a powerful role. Your employer brand consists of a lot of different parts, but one of the most make-or-break areas is your employee reviews.

Reviews As Word Of Mouth

Consumers are increasingly using the internet as an important resource for informing theiroffline purchase decisions. A familiar example is when online reviews are at the core of the decisions you’re making as a consumer -- decisions like picking a restaurant based on its Yelp reviews, or buying products on Amazon based on verified people who have purchased that same item.

All of this behavior you find in consumers as they make purchase decisions reflects exactly how job seekers today are approaching their career decisions. And as a result, the online information your company is -- and isn’t -- creating for job candidates’ research will impact their ultimate decision on whether to work for your company. What you have to ask yourself then is: Does my online employer brand make candidates want to “buy in” or look elsewhere?

Employer Branding Tips

Since every employer’s situation is unique, there is no single magic solution to make your employer brand “good” or to immediately rescue one from a bad state. But here are a few actionable tips that can set any company on the right path to a better employer brand:

• Establish internal accountability. If you haven’t yet acted on your employer brand, it doesn’t mean you’re lazy. What’s more likely is that there hasn’t been any structure established around the topic of employer branding in your organization. If this sounds about right, a great action to take is defining who internally is most impacted by lack of quality talent or not enough job applicants and having them own it.

• Put yourself in your candidates’ shoes. If you boil everything down to basics, what matters most with your employer brand is how your company is perceived by your ideal job candidates. So, if you want to know where to start with employer branding, begin by thinking like a candidate. What details would you want to get from a company if you were thinking about working there? More real employee photos, more positive press and/or ratings, more timely and respectful communication in the application process, or simply more up-to-date and honest information? Whatever it is, give them what they want.

• Publish more interesting brand content. Like consumers, job candidates are pretty happy to get their hands on more unique online content from brands that they’re interested in. And thanks to social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram -- and also the flexibility of a career page, if you have one -- employers now have plenty of free options topublish brand content where candidates are already looking. Use this to your advantage by creating more employer brand content -- like photos of your workspace and of candid team moments -- and publish it online for all to see.

• Join public conversations about your employer brand. There are a couple of ways to look at public conversations about your brand. One is what’s being said about you in the news in general, and your public awards/accolades. Work to gain some of this beneficial PR,and make any news that exists about your company as positive as possible. The other way to look at public conversations about your employer brand is your online employer reviews, which we’ve already talked a bit about. On most review platforms, employers have the opportunity to publicly respond to the reviews that people have written, whether they’re good or bad. By taking the opportunity to read and respond, you’re demonstrating to job candidates that you care about transparency and about becoming a better employer.

• Boost employee morale as a way to build employer brand. Aside from these quick employer branding action items, there’s another tactic you should be looking at: boosting your employee morale. That’s because prospective employees aren’t the only ones who care about your employer brand reputation -- current team members care too. Team members also have the ability to influence your employer brand in a way that nobody else can. The main lesson: Employee morale in your company can either be your best weapon for your employer brand or your biggest downfall.

Everyone wants to be a part of a positive workplace where they can thrive and be respected and appreciated for their work. Use that knowledge to your advantage. When you’ve done your part to shape a positive employer brand as an organization from the outside and a healthy employee morale from the inside, your team members are that much more likely to contribute positively to your employer brand to the external world.